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IAA? IA-Oh No.
Prowl is on the beat. He's got plenty on his mind; with Megatron's new -Autobot- registration act being put in place, he has his concerns. Proteus wanted registrations. Look how well that turned out in the end. He leaves his cherries off for the time being and is travelling alone (so he believes, anyways) as he approaches the IAA headquarters in Ibex. This is where one of the Institute cells is located. He has no idea if it's still in operation. Trouble arrives. It comes on four wheels with flames splashed bold across the hood. Hot Rod's frame is unmistakable, regardless of what shape he takes. His spoiler lofts in the air like the flag of rebellion!!! Hot Rod swerves in alongside Prowl across a lane of traffic, thus engaging in risky, unsafe driving practice on top of the speeding he was already practicing. What he's doing /closing/ on a cop-bot is anyone's guess, but it's a mystery soon to be solved as he calls a, "Prowl?" somewhat uncertainly. Look, the Enforcer black-and-whites all look the same. He's not sure. "Yes?" is the reply. It's Prowl. As Hot Rod closes in, the enforcer is having that sudden sinking feeling. Is the rebel going to lecture him on how great Megatron is? How much one should listen to FEELINGS instead of -reality-? Pffff. Great. "Oh, good. You all look the same." As much as that might be the case (and it isn't, they totally look different), Hot Rod's still /not supposed to say it/. He's quiet a moment as he considers elegant arguments, proposals, and offers, then he just says, "I want to help take out the Institute." Sitting on the edge of the racetrack at Ibex, Motormaster has this year's Ibex Cup. And he's chugging straight from it. The Stunticons have rounded up every racer, mechanic and fan in the area and has them all corralled in the in-yard of the track, with Wildrider and Dead End keeping watch, as Drag Strip is racing some unfortunate spark around the track at top speed. "Very well. Follow me, Hot Rod. I know that you understand what we're going to be seeing when we go in there. The cell may still be live, and we may have prisoners to get out - or they may start smelting brain modules as fast as they can and scatter like scraplets in a hydrogenated oxygen stream," Prowl instructs as the IAA building comes up over the horizon. Engine stuttering in surprise, Hot Rod recovers smoothly with a, "What, wait, now? I mean -- okay. I'm totally-- really?" Totally smooth. He sounds excited, like it's all presents and engex and treats, when actually it's probably pretty horrible. It would be easy to think it's all a game to Hot Rod. It would be easy to not take him very seriously. But he keeps pace with Prowl, falling in with him. "Do /you/ really understand what it's going to be like?" he asks with some doubt. "You managed to not-see a lot of the worst of the Primes." Pushing himself out of his seat, Motormaster finishes off the Ibex Cup and as Drag Strip comes over after winning his race, the large mech places it on his head like a cap. "Here, hold my drink." he rumbles as he looks over at the small crowd of racers. "Make sure they know we rule the roads here now." he grunts as he dusts off his hands and turns to face towards the headquarters. Protoforming into his large transport and trailer combo, the black truck of doom rolls out towards where he picks up Prowl and Hot Rod's flashy paint job. A loud blaring of his horn announces his presence. "You better not be yanking my chain, cop, or I'll introduce you to a new meaning of police brutality." "I worked with Barricade. You can't be worse," Prowl replies noncommittally, driving along and moving over to let Motormaster hog his share of the road (likely out of the middle). "I believe in the system, Hot Rod. I was forged in Petrex, the seat of the Functionist Council. Speaking ill of your altmode was an offense punishable by jail time," he explains. "It was strict, yes, but it taught me to appreciate the rules, look up to authority." He's wound up inside, twisting with feelings of betrayal. "The fact that authority cannot follow its own rules is offensive. It's beyond offensive - but it's my duty to clean up the mess." "Sometimes they make bad rules." Tone troubled, Hot Rod probably shouldn't go ahead and add a muttered, "Like that stupid registration act," when Motormaster is /right there/, but this is Hot Rod, and besides, they have other fights to pick at the moment. The IAA is a bigger, better target. Probably. "Besides, I wasn't blaming you that time." /That time/. "I'm just saying -- it got pretty bad, Prowl. You might not be ready for it." Hot Rod's concerned. Condescendingly so! Poor little desk cop doesn't know how bad it gets out on the /streets/. Hot Rod pulls to the side to get a good look at Motormaster, then calls a not unfriendly: "So who are you? You look good to smash a few things." "Good thing there's a new authority in town, isn't there. HAW." Motormaster says with a rueful chuckle. "Maybe it'll keep your head out of your aft when Primes are frakking up the works. OH WAIT." Another laugh. So much for treating a vanquished foe with respect. "I'm the KING OF THE ROAD, KID." Motormaster booms as he takes up the middle of road, his vehicle mode swinging back and forth. "MOTORMASTER." he roars his engine as he hogs up all the street. "Do you know what I used to do when I was just an investigator on the force in Iacon?" Prowl asks Hot Rod, trying his damnedest to ignore Motormaster's incredibly loud showboating belligerence. "Mechaforensics. I worked with corpses." He has seen some things, man. "I saw what they were doing when I went to investigate Sherma's murder. Hollowed out heads of Empties. Brain modules being peeled. Magnetic locks on tables in surgical theaters. I think I'll be able to handle it, though your concern is appreciated." "And I'm signing up for the registration act as soon as this is over. I want the entire planet to know where I stand." "More like king of the big aft trailers." Veering to avoid the swing of Motormaster's frame across the road, Hot Rod steers back with a grumble. "Yeah, okay, /maybe/ you can handle it," he agrees with Prowl. "You know that whole list is just going to be a list of targets for anyone with a grudge, right? You really want to be encouraging people to put themselves in the way of something like that? What if it gets out?" "Awww. You seen some tough scrap. And it's touched you. For me? That was a Solusday." Motormaster says with a snorting chuckle. The large truck nudges further into Prowl's lane, just to bug his haughtiness even more. As Hot Rod speaks up, Motormaster /laughs/. "It's fine for us to do it, right? Hell, I LIKED IT SO MUCH I DID IT TWICE." See. One on each side of the trailer. "It's a fragging shame that noone thought of that when Proteus did it - OH WAIT AGAIN." the large truck swerves dangerously towards Hot Rod and back out again. After all, he likes to be up close and personal when he has these informal chats. "Just get over the pissing and moaning, at least Megatron made the spark carving optional for little pansy mechs like Blurr to chicken out on pledging his allegiance towards anything that ain't himself. That's what I like about you, cop. At least you have some frakking convictions. Unlike the rest of that turborat scrap outfit you work with." Prowl Prowl slows down to prevent Motormaster's big ol' trailer from getting in the way. "You know you still have to obey the rules of the road. That much hasn't changed - but I'll overlook ticketing you this time if you smash through that barricaded gate up ahead. That's where we'll need to be." "I arrested Megatron for Sentinel, Hot Rod. I put the cuffs on him myself. Revenge isn't a matter of if. It's a matter of -when-." "I wasn't in favor of it then, either," says Hot Rod with a heat that bristles right up in answer to Motormaster's swerve. "I think the whole thing is stupid." He presents his arguments with force, if not eloquence. "I don't care who's in charge." Falling back just slightly as Prowl directs their attention to the barricade ahead, Hot Rod says, "Why make yourself a target, then? Unless--." He breaks off, with an unusually thoughtful quality to the even more unusual silence that follows. Uh oh. Hot Rod's thinking. "You got to pay the iron price sometime, eh, cop?" Motormaster asks, right up until Prowl threatens to ticket him. "You know what you can do with your ticket book? You can take it and.." The following is censored by the loud blaring of Motormaster's horn as the large truck barrels down on the entrance of the IAA. As the security guard comes out to flag him down to stop, black smoke ushers forth as the big rig races forward and speeds up. The security guard tries to run.. and Motormaster swerves to slam right into the mech, crushing him into his front end and he pile drives him directly into the wall next to the barricade and crushes him to a pile of scrap underneath his wheels as the large mech barrels into the main lot of the IAA HQ and then forward, slamming into the front of the building, sending out shards of glass and metal as he crashes through the front lobby and right into the security station, crushing the mech on duty there. "...and then you can spin!" he finishes his ticketing rant as he transforms, sword in one hand, cannon in the other. "DO YOU HAVE A MOMENT TO SPEAK ABOUT EXPLOSIONS AND DEATH?" Prowl rolls to a stop behind the carnage and transforms into root. He calmly unholsters the Investigator Special and takes it off of its safety. "Thank you for your cooperation, Motormaster, and your opinions have been duly noted," he replies. "Hot Rod, Motormaster - I have a request to make of you both, before we get started." A touch of distaste is clear on Hot Rod's features as he transforms with the others. Although it's not obvious what it's for, the way his gaze follows Motormaster might /suggest/ a reason, as it lingers on the poor fallen guard. Poor guard. Surely not at all complicit in all kinds of horror and tragedy. ALL KINDS. "Better not be anything like 'slow down', because I don't think that's in the cards," says Hot Rod to Prowl as he advances on the opening that Motormaster's rammed into the lobby. His pace picks up and his expression brightens with the prospect of heroism on the horizon. You don't ask the Mortormaster for requests. The Motormaster graced you with his presence. That is good enough for you. As he lets out a cry of energonlust, the large mech aims his cyclone cannon at the nearest door and blasts it wide open. "KNOCK KNOCK!" he yells as he shoulders his way through the remains of the door and down the hallway beyond. ...set the timer. And follow the screams. That's the direction that Motormaster has gone in. Request? Pray. Pray that they aren't home. "--No, in this case, Hot Rod? We're speaking up. We're speeding up as fast as we can possibly go. Come on!!" Prowl runs after Motormaster into the facility, trying to figure out which direction that the big idiot went. He tries to call him on the radio, to get his attention. He's hoping that Hot Rod can keep up. Of COURSE Hot Rod can keep up! "That's more like it!" There's a laugh in his voice as he chases after, but it's a laugh that fades with the next beat as they move into what's left behind. It's not that Hot Rod's surprised, exactly, by the destruction that Motormaster leaves behind, but it's hard not to find a waste. Even here. Even them. Blasting and slashing continues down the hallway, intermingled with screams of scientists and assistants that dare to or accidentally come across the force of nature that is Motormaster. Then suddenly, there's a silence. And a scream and a sound of someone begging for their spark. And Motormaster's booming voice. "OH YOU LIKE MENEMOSURGERY? Let's OPERATE!" Schluck. That would be the sound of a sword going into someone's brain box. Was it Chromedome? DON'T KNOW, DO YOU. "Oh yeah, that's the good scrap right there." Prowl's innermost energon is running cold. He turns the corner to find out what Motormaster just did, praying that he's not going to see that gold and orange form on the floor, leaking out, fading away. "We're supposed to be -arresting- them!" he hisses out loud, maybe to Hot Rod, maybe to noone in particular. "You've been in one of these before, right?" quickly asks the younger mech. "There's a group of technicians I'm looking for. We need to get them out of here -alive-." "Thought you were supposed to be different than the Autobots!" Hot Rod temper flashes into outrage as they round the corner to find Motormaster at play. "This isn't how you show you're different!" He's -- ugh! -- on the same page as Prowl -- ugh!! -- it seems where treatment of the technicians is concerned. "Some of these people might not even be here by their own will!" At Prowl's question, Hot Rod nods absently -- but a moment later, you can just /watch/ as the idea /hits/ his face. "I--." Then he goes quiet. Weirdly quiet. Weirdly and suspiciously and yeah he's totally switching to comms. He hops onto the frequency that Team Pax used in Kaon and broadcasts narrow, focused to just the room -- just to Prowl. << Follow me. I bet I know where they'd probably have put the data servers, and I /also/ bet that's where the technicians are. >> That's a lot of bets to go on. "Sure. We should go start clearing up the prisoners and making sure they are okay." He says it a little loud and a lot stiff. He's not the world's greatest liar. Unless Chromedome's gone femme, Prowl's safe. Motormaster rips the sword from the skull of the femme that was about to go all cranial on the femme that was on the table. "You know what happens when a place like this is attacked, cop? They /liquidate/ the assets. You /morons/." he growls. swinging his sword around towards Prowl, as it drips energon. "See that femme over there? Con registrant, and you were more than willing to let her get drilled in the name of caution." he spits on the floor and strips the restraints from the femme. "You two are the biggest naieve morons on the face of Cybertron." he rumbles angrily as he sets the prisoner on the ground. "Find a weapon, gal, and help me show these dolts how it's done." With that, he turns his attention to hunting down more of the scientists and such in the lab. And freeing prisoners. Said femme, a bright shade of watermelon red, magenta and purples, spreads a wide grin, still gazing at Motormaster, her new personal savior. (Yes, you may pity her). "Frag me with a boreholer," she mutters in relieved shock. "Y-- you don't know how close they came, big-rig. Holy Primus smokin' a piston rod!" She thrusts her hands into the air. "FRAG!" So happy she's cursing as she kicks over a surgical and goes immediately to the downed corpse to look for something useful. Prowl just stares. He's relieved too, but he's certainly not going to express it like -that-. << ... Yes. Unfortunately that isn't going to help me find the technicians before he does. I have no idea where they're going to be or even what lab facility they're in. We have to stay ahead of Motormaster, or at least with him, to keep him from executing them. >> He's trying to think on his feet and come up with some kind of plan on the fly. Primus knows Hot Rod isn't the most tactical minded individual. The sound of twisting, breaking metal catches Prowl's attention for a moment; it's the sick sound of something being torn free. The newly rescued femmebot has pulled the technician's arm loose at the elbow joint. She sticks her fingers into the mechanisms inside, squinting on one side of her face, tongue curling a bit out one corner. *SCHLICKT* The mnemnonic needles flick out of the ends of the fingers on the severed limb. "Okay!" she announces cheerfully, holding it in one hand and play swordfighting with it. "Not my usual thing but it'll have to do." "...." Prowl just continues to stare, concentration broken. << Then come /on/. >> When Prowl freezes, Hot Rod moves. He grabs Prowl by the edge of one of his doors and pulls, kind of like yanking a cop around by the ear: it's a bad idea, but it's probably effective, and that's all that matters! << If nothing else, we're faster. >> "Looks like you've got a new friend there, mech! Nice work!" Hot Rod calls over his shoulder as they keep moving. "FRAK YEAH!" Motormaster approves of using enemy arms. Especially when they are arms. "Now point out where the other prisoners are, girl, and we'll go show these two pansyafts how things are done down in Contown." the large mech rumbles. "Five points for science nerds, two for assistants. I'm already at twenty-three." She's gonna have her work cut out for her to catch up as Motormaster steps between the two slap-happy mechs and shoulders his way forward. "You want it down, it's going down. You decide if you want to save anyone and incur the wrath of the Motormaster, or you follow his lead and have a damn fun time." With that, he tosses a bag of circuit speeders to Prowl. "A little pick me up from the folks of the IAA. Whole room of them a couple of areas back." he rumbles as he grabs the femme by the arm and drags her along with him. "Frak the goodie goodies, let's go kick some aft." And thanks to Hot Rod dragging Prowl along, they go in separate directions at a hall junction. Probably because they're interested in saving the scientists and well.. Motormaster has murder on his mind. And dat gap. "Woo hoo!" the femmebot calls out, trying not to let her spoiler get caught on doorways as Motormaster kind of pulls her along. "Hey, I can walk y'know! Drive too! I'm a racer!" Her voice is getting harder to make out as they move further down the hall. Prowl's face tightens right before Hot Rod just grabs him by the doorwings - JUST GRABS HIM RIGHT THERE - and pulls him away. He stumbles to catch himself before he falls over. Okay, there's still some 'I have not seen all the sh*t yet' shock dulling his focus as he tries to get to his senses -- he manages to grab the bag, catching it without a thought: Drugs. Drugs inside the bag. "... Well, now I know why Blurr was always talking so fast," he deadpans, dropping the bag like it's made of gross. He follows Hot Rod into the other side of the facility. "Sure, sure." Motormaster releases the femme somewhere along the way. Prowl and Hot Rod will hear their merrymaking on occasion, complete with explosions, shooting, and screams. Best blind date ever. Once Prowl's moving, Hot Rod stops pulling and gives him a reassuring slap on the shoulder. There we go! An instant later, he's bolting down the hall. "Okay, so that was weird, right, with the whole -- arm and the ... everything?" he asks as he runs. He skids to a stop here, there -- checking to see if they've found the nerds yet. "Decepticons are kind of--." A shout from the other side punctuates the sentence. He leaves it unfinished. "Don't say I didn't warn you," Prowl grimfacedly replies. "Pit fighters, Hot Rod. Most of them were pit fighters. This is what they do - now multiply that by a lot of them being in control of the entire planet." Prowl lets that sink in as he runs to what's marked as the complex's control room. Hot Rod starts to argue -- it's right there, right on the edge of his teeth, but he bites it back at the last second. He looks troubled. Of course, it could be any of the ten thousand horrors that they pass on the way to the control room that make him look troubled, too. Not the slowly dawning realization that his pals the Decepticons may not be anyone's pals at all. "Nothing wrong with pit fighting," is all he /eventually/ says. Eventually Motormaster slams through one last wall and bursts through the other side of the IAA building. "Everyone out!" he yells as he drops his trailer door to off load the Con prisoners, waiting to see if Ignition joins in the general retreat. "Saw some stragglers, but figured we'd leave some scraps so that the cop doesn't whine too much to Megatron. You know how he feels about whiners." His windshield wipers flick away some energon and bits from his windows. Prowl kicks down the door and goes straight into the facility. A few computer technicians freeze in their places, dropping into fetal balls, one of them transforming into a laser pointer and just kind of... well, laying there on the floor, hoping he won't be noticed. "It's all right, I'm not -- not -that idiot- out there," Prowl tries to reassure. "Try to contact the base, and I want a list of names - everyone working *here* and everyone working in all the other facilities. NOW." He draws his gun to make sure they get the point. "He's not talking about me," Hot Rod reassures(?) them as he follows in after Prowl. "He means some other idiot." Not that he's an idiot. He nudges the laser point over toward the others with one of his overlarge puppy feet, and keeps close watch on those at the machines to make sure no one's getting any bright ideas about wiping data or pulling plugs. The laser pointer altmode just rolls along the floor to where the others. It flicks off and on once in pure terror. "Y-yes sir," the main technician blurts out, working quickly at the controls, loading information onto a data slug to pass to Prowl. "You're not going to kill us are you?!" he demands, trying to scrape the remains of his courage off the floor, where it's puddled beneath him. "No. You're lucky. I'm only here to arrest you." Prowl takes the data slug and slots it into a side compartment on his torso, pausing for a nanoklik to process the data. His free hand goes to his face in a trembling vent of relief. "Not here. He wasn't here," he mutters under his breath. "No!" Hot Rod insists with rather more vehemence than Prowl. "You're just--" That's about when he realizes he's helping the LAW go out and ARREST people and even though IT'S REALLY BAD PEOPLE he can't help but have a momentary twinge of disassociated ick. What is he doing. How did his life come to this. "Ugh." Hot Rod gives Prowl a sharp look, but glances at the technicians and then back. He gives Prowl a long 'I HEARD THAT' stare but leaves it for another time. Instead, he focuses on the technicians: "Me, I'll take a list of your /prisoners/, as well as their conditions, and I want to see every one of them stable when we help them walk out of here or someone out there's going to be pretty mad at you." As much as he might find Motormaster's methods distasteful, he's apparently not above using them as threat. Prowl gives Hot Rod a smug, arrogant smirk. "I'm standing up for my beliefs. You're helping the law. Hell of a day, isn't it." "Don't remind me," Hot Rod growls as he gathers the list. "And I still think that registering is /really/ dumb. Are you just trying to bait the Decepticons into targeting and mistreating you so that you can show everyone else just how bad an idea it is?" "I'm proud of this badge. It stands for order, sanity and reason. It stands for a civilized society," Prowl explains as he gets out stasis cuffs to arrest the remaining technicians, removing them from a side compartment. "Commander Pax took the name 'Autobot' and tried to make it stand for something better. Someone has to keep trying." "It stands for--" The rest of Hot Rod's words are a mumble, and predictably include things like 'tyranny' and 'corruption' and et cetera, et cetera. He watches as Prowl cuffs the technicians and folds his arms over his chest to smush an itching impulsive to slap the cuffs away and let the criminals go. No! They are bad guys! The cop is a good guy! He clearly struggles. "Where's the badge that means defending the weak? Where's the badge that means helping the hopeless? That's what a lot of people see in the Decepticons right now, you know. I don't see what difference orders and laws make if you're not doing the right things." Prowl sends a radio ahead to those who'd been assigned to work with him, and the remaining law enforcement and medical facilities in the area to come pick up prisoners and detained technicians as soon as possible. "What a lot of people see in the Decepticons is a thin strand of hope, dangled in front of them. They'll grab onto it because they don't think they have a better option. They'll never see the trap that strand is going to spring on them when it's grasped." "Law is what defines right and wrong. You take that away, and everyone does what they think is right - and things like *this*," Prowl says, gesturing to the building, "--happen. Law and order is what we all agree on in order to function as a society, Hot Rod. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean we throw it away. The alternative is much worse." "This /started/ lawfully, Prowl!" Hot Rod throws his arms wide and pivots to face Prowl. Those poor, poor techies, forced to listen to this. "This started because the people who were upholding what was right and deciding what was /lawful/ wanted to rewrite everyone else until they agreed with them. With everything you've seen -- everything you saw Sentinel, everything you saw Zeta do--." Hot Rod squares his shoulders and firms his stance. "Look at me, and you tell me you think it's always right to obey laws and respect authority, when that /lawful authority/ comes marching into our homes and puts citizens to death to fuel weapons." (Duh. Of course this is about Nyon.) Unfortunately for Hot Rod, Prowl has no idea what truly happened in Nyon. There will be no mercy in Prowl's response. "That was -not- lawful authority," he replies firmly. "There is no law that allowed for what happened in Nyon. There was no law that allowed for -this-. Sentinel and Zeta Prime were /criminals/ who abused their position of authority, *abused the trust of the good mechs and femmes that served them*!" There are sirens outside, getting louder. The Ibexian first responders are close at hand. "When are you going to learn to separate perception from reality, Hot Rod? You look at me and you don't see -me-. You look at my badge and see everything Zeta or Sentinel did and you condemn me and society for -their crimes-. You listen to Megatron's promises nice rhetoric and you turn a blind eye to the fact that he's willing to -kill people- to get what he wants." Prowl holsters his weapon, picking up the laser pointer altmode to literally apprehend him. "Believing only what you want to hear and ignoring facts is what gets people sucked up into a cult of personality. They follow blindly after their chosen leader until they end up dead at his hand." Yeah, Hot Rod really shouldn't have brought that up. He goes tight, shoulders snapping straight and spoiler shivering with tension. He looks away. "Yeah, well. Whatever." Yes. Yes, that's really what he says. That's /really/ his retort. "I'm going to go check on the prisoners," Hot Rod says, ducking out of the line of fire and out the door. "Sound of all your cop friends is making me twitchy." Ah, yes. /The sirens/. That's the problem. He escapes with an air of singed dignity and vague pain.